The Real Victims of the Trayvon Martin Shooting- The Sunday Collage

Like most of you, if I never hear the name Trayvon Martin again, it may be too soon.

So it was this morning, that I found myself reading a story about the former Police Chief in Sanford, Fla., Bill Lee and his Captain, Robert O' Connor. Both men had combined law enforcement experience of 60 years. Good men.  http://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/6355062-Zimmerman-Martin-case-Exclusive-interview-with-former-Sanford-police-chief-and-captain/

That is what pisses me off. Real people with real careers get sacrificed when our President can't keep his mouth shut. Obama had no business interfering, race baiting, or pretending he cares about local issues and injecting himself anywhere he finds a spotlight. These two guys were real men, good men, and they deserve far better than the pile of shit that they were handed as retirement gifts.

Sanford is a relatively small community of 55,000 people. Both Lee and O'Connor had spent their lives working through the ranks of the Sanford Police Department. You generally don't get to the loftiest perches of any police department without showing good judgment, good reasoning, and intelligence. It's very hard to survive in a police environment- especially at the upper levels. That's where the politics gets played and trust me when I say this.

Mostly, I have never met a politician without an ax to grind. Maybe once or twice.

I dreaded becoming Chief. I had to somehow make 10 years (to retirement) in the most liberal environment in the entire state. That and after 20 or so years, particularly in small towns like Hailey, (population 9000) local politics is brutal. I had pissed people off and despite my fantastic attitude and warm, loving people skills- there were people that did not like me. Local politicians are self serving and seldom run opposed in Moonbat Valley. There is an absolute dearth of compassionate, quality people willing to get into local politics. Good people avoid conflict. They have a great deal of common sense and only under the most dire of circumstances, will good people submit themselves to public scrutiny and media ridicule. That was my experience.

So what we get in local politics, especially in Moonbat Valley, are educated trust funders or people with money. Occasionally a power hungry, ego maniac gets into some political office. I dreaded those folks the most and so it was that I ended up catching one of those types for the last five years of my career- and that was just bad luck. She even told me once, how she enjoyed firing people. That statement is all I ever really needed to know about her.

I had always imagined a false rape report might be the end of me. Those investigations were tough to defend especially when the investigation let to a high probability that the "victim" was lying. I dreaded those cases but thankfully- we could submit them to the prosecutor who could turn them down and in Idaho- you can't sue a prosecutor for a bad charging decision or for no charging decision. Cops don't have that luxury. What makes a police chief in Idaho even more vulnerable is that they are not elected. They can be fired at any time without due process.

There is one other very odd thing about being a career police officer. Many members of the public think they know how to do your job better than you do. It is a fascinating thing. Every once in awhile in my previous life, when I ran into one of these people I might ask, "Why is it that people think they know more about how to perform this job than the person who has been performing it for 20 years?" That was part of my warm, embraceable, people skills. I'll tell you this. There is no shortage of those types.

My favorite instructor in college was a small town Chief who got fired because he had consumed a beer in public and then drove home. It ruined a remarkable career. In his last days, Noble Taylor, taught young guys like me how to be decent cops. He hated teaching- I knew he did. If he could have been a Chief anywhere, he would have taken the job in a heartbeat. He reminded me of "Sully" on Third Watch. The last time I saw him he was in a wheelchair. What a way to go. It still conjures up a little anger in me.

But that is the life.

So Police Chiefs everywhere get fired or forced out on political whims. The standard "on the job life expectancy" of a Police Chief used to be 4 years. Fire chiefs (mattress backs if you prefer) fare far better. They are not political whipping posts. You usually have to pry them out of their jobs.

Bill Lee and Bob O'Connor did what they were supposed to do. They investigated the Martin shooting just like they had been doing with thousands of cases over 30 years. They knew Zimmerman had acted within the law even though he might have exercised bad judgment. The law doesn't negotiate. With a complete lack of evidence, cops and prosecutors can't simply trump up a charge and hang it on an innocent party even if it is politically expedient. Like it or not, Lee and O' Connor could not escape this shit storm. The professional armchair quarterbacks had arrived en masse.

Local politicians can always be counted on to do the wrong thing and this group was no exception. They second guessed everything Chief Lee was doing and they were angry that he was doing his job- and not catering to the media or the President. Lee only knew to do the right thing. The same thing he had been doing his entire life. They investigated and found no reason to charge an innocent man. Local prosecutors concurred. The Florida Governor, and some cherry picked prosecutor, tried to make  a case out of nothing and the prosecution got their collective asses kicked. That's exactly how it should have turned out.

For 30 years, Bill Lee and Bob O' Connor were willing to take a bullet and lose their lives to protect the citizens of Sanford. For 30 years, they could be counted on when things took a nasty turn. For a few weeks, Bill Lee and Bob O' Connor needed some community help and support. Most folks might think that 30 years worth of service in exchange for a few weeks of support might be a fair trade. They received nothing. Lee and O ' Connor were abandoned by the City of Sanford and it's citizens. That's the world we find ourselves in.

The world of disposable lives and careers. The real victims of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Two innocent cops doing what they had always done. Doing their jobs.

That's seriously messed up. The President, the media, and the City of Sanford should be ashamed of themselves.

Take no victory lap here, cowards. I want to leave you with a quote from Bill Lee (from the article I linked) about what happened to him and his feelings about it.

Chief Lee was relieved of his duties and was informed the community no longer had trust in him. 

“The whole thing has been pretty ugly. I’m at peace with it on most days. I was happy I could walk away with my integrity,” Lee said. 

I think I would like Bill Lee and Bob O' Connor. They were the only people in this entire mess  who acted like responsible adults. And they paid a dear price for it.

Ten Reasons To Hate Huffington Post (like you needed any)

For several years now, I have tried to limit my daily intake of left and right wing fanaticism to two blogs. Ace of Spades and Huffington Post. They are polar opposites.

In terms of sheer writing ability, nobody can match Ace. He is simply the best political writer out there and he has a very insightful way of looking at things. Unfortunately, Ace is mired in the same two party rhetoric that has kept our country hostage for the last 50 years. He hasn't figured out yet that it's all one mongrel dog party. Ace is a true conservative who clings to a party that abandoned him at birth. He just doesn't know it yet.

A meandering slice of my Huffpo experience.

I began reading Huffington Post in 2010. I did that primarily to see if those people were any better informed than the dog pound over at Ace's. Perhaps I thought, they might generate something of value to read and they did. Once. I found it in the comments and actually had a conversation with somebody who wasn't hopelessly jaded. He was aware of the idea of corporate welfare or as my friend Billy loves to say...

"Privatizing profits and socializing losses." The new American corporate business model. Pay people chump change because you can- and then stick taxpayers with their SNAP card and Obamacare bills. One typical Walmart store might cost taxpayers nearly a million dollars a year. http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/04/news/companies/walmart-medicaid/index.html

That Adrianna Huffington sold this on line rag for 300 million- is proof positive that any idiot with too much money to spend- is still an idiot.

Here then is the list.

10. Huffington Post publishes a great deal of gossip and fluff. Anything that is narcissistic, superficial, and materialistic might very well find it's way onto Huffington Post's front page. That's their bread and butter.

09. Adriana Huffington. I can't stand her elite, smug attitude. I always loved to find things that she had written and point out the obvious flaws. Of course, my comments were never published.

08. The commenters on Huffpo are some of the most ego centered and righteous people I have ever read or tried to carry on a flame war with. Many think quite highly of themselves. Often they write in a belittling way as though they have captured the meaning of things you haven't yet noticed.

07.  It is impossible to have a constructive conversation on Huffpost. The readers just make up shit and post it. Very often, daily in fact, I would ask for proof for some of their more outlandish statements. That would shut them up 90% of the time. The other 10% of the posters would start some childish "fuck you match" wherein any chance of exchanging constructive information was lost.

06. Badges. Who gives out little badges? Huffpost does. Some of the more prolific commenters have all kinds of these silly badges. It reminds me of those nerdy little girls when I was a child- girls who used to sit in the front row of class- thrusting their arms in the air anytime the teacher asked a question. It happened. It still happens on Huffpo.

05. All things must lean left. Huffpo readers cannot have an original, independent thought. They can't carry on a conversation unless it's pro abortion, pro atheism, anti-gun, or some other democratic party tenet- real or imagined. The criminal activity of the democratic leadership never gets mentioned.

04. Huffpo readers hate Republicans. These folks are professional haters and what's more- they REALLY think the GOP is the problem. That level of unconsciousness is awe inspiring.

03. Huffpo readers love Obama and they make more excuses for him than any man living or dead. Let's face it, if Obama were white, he'd be impeached by now. This worthless bastard gets a free pass because he is black. If he were judged on performance as an employee, most of us would fire him.

02. Censorship. Huffpo employs "moderators." These are people without lives who sit around their grandmother's basement and delete any comments they don't like. Hijacking and controlling the conversation is a typical Alinsky style tactic. They must delete thousands of perfectly good comments every day.

01. Fanaticism. If there was ever a statement that summed up the general thought process of a typical Huffpo reader it would be this one according to Winston Churchill, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". By either description the fanatic displays very strict standards and little tolerance for contrary ideas or opinions.

There are so many worthwhile things you could be reading rather than Huffpo- like the ingredients on your shampoo bottle. Even the employees hate the place. http://tktk.gawker.com/hell-is-working-at-the-huffington-post-1707724052?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_twitter&utm_source=gawker_twitter&utm_medium=so

We Spend 1.1 Trillion a Year To Get 1.7 GDP Growth???

Wow. 1.7 GDP growth and of course, that will get revised lower.

Can you imagine what would happen to our "economy" if the FED wasn't injecting a trillion a year?

Unlike Huffpo, readers of the Frankenstein Government blog do not subscribe to hot air and bullshit. It just never seems to quit. Government revised GDP this morning to make all the suckers think the economy is doing better than it is.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-31/dear-americans-according-todays-data-revision-you-are-all-richer

Obama: Who You Going To Believe, Me or Your Lying Eyes?

From ZeroHedge. The whole story on one chart.

Obama: "...the economy is far stronger now than it was four and a half years ago."

...as long as one ignores the reality of the following chart...

Just Tell 'Em, "Pog Mo Thoin!"- The Sunday Collage

In with a gaelic twist today.

In Moonbat Valley this week, the part time County Commissioners who I believe are all liberals of some sort, gave themselves a 33% pay hike. This they did over the objections of nearly every taxpayer who bothered to take notice.

Giving yourself a 33% pay hike is not a horrific event if you are making a few thousand a yr. But if you are already making 61, 500 and then say, "Hey I got a great idea, let's give ourselves a 20,400 dollar a year raise!... well that is almost like slapping your constituents in the face- many of them making 40- or 50k a year at full time jobs. Oddly enough, the measure passed unanimously although I noted that one "departing" commissioner said earlier this year that he was "against" the monster raise.

He was always that gutsy.

It is also worth noting that the commissioners gave themselves a paltry 11% raise the year before. That is a cumulative 44% in two years.

Here's the link to the piece. I always try to sign my name and having been relegated to the pastures of the retirement community, I don't mind spanking people without fear of retribution. http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005148263#.UfMXQxz5knY

The commissioners will not be sending me a meat and cheese tray for Christmas although it appears quite likely, they could afford to do so if they wished.

Can you imagine walking into your job on Monday and demanding a 33% raise or failing that, simply appropriating a like amount from the safe?

Now I don't pretend to know all of the details of what a County Commissioner does- although I have had a few friends who were commissioners. They assured me it was a rather easy gig, but often very time consuming. I knew one commissioner who actually worked his butt off. He was one of those rare people who did this kind of thing to advance his community. In the old days, we called this "public service." He probably worked harder than all of these people and he was a gentleman. Len Harlig was his name.

So commissioners read things like applications after they have been routed and reviewed by various departments. They develop meeting agendas. They usually have a county attorney attending their meetings who interprets and advises them on legal issues. They are quick to delegate work to reviewing departments and the county manager. The county manager is supposed to do this kind of work full time- and in the case of Moonbat Valley- he is like the Yeti. Some say that he exists, yet I have never personally seen him.

So mostly I think, commissioners read, attend meetings, make up their minds, and then pretend to be open minded as a developer or department head pitches some project or budget. They are the budget deciders. They always know how each other is voting and sometimes, they will vote a dissenting opinion although they know it won't cause an application or proposal to fail. Sometimes they will nod approvingly and solemnly while secretly mulling over what type of wine to have with dinner that night or whether they paid their American Express bill on time. They also attend ancillary meetings on additional pet projects and they talk with the press.

A couple of years ago, the Moonbat Valley Commissioners even commissioned a working group to study and compare with other communities-whether their salaries were adequate. Unfortunately, the working group came to the conclusion that the commissioners were adequately paid and said so.

The first job of all committees is to rig them with people who will give you a friendly result. This is not rocket science. If you want to rig a committee, talk to a school district. They are professionals. There is nothing more embarrassing than putting together a committee and receiving some truthful and adversarial result. That is not what committees are designed to do. They are designed to take the heat off of the people who are going to benefit so that they can get re-elected. That way, it makes the whole process look honest and above board.

I worked in government for nearly 25 years and what it taught me- was a horrible disdain for all things political.

I wasn't predisposed to that result, I simply let the truth take me where it would. I suppose I could pretend that all of this does not happen and ignore it. Most do.

On the other hand, my Uncle Lynn tells me- that you must always confront stupid. I have to admit- I like confronting stupid and that's why I write. Which brings me back to the gaelic and one universal truth. You are entitled to your opinion- do not be afraid to utter it if you are culling out stupid and have a well thought out position.

But know this. Some people have no sense of shame and they will send an aircraft carrier full of ridicule your way for having the audacity to point them out. I have a simple solution.

The other day, some jail work crew was in my alley weed whacking. The crew leader noticed my car and my license plate frames colored with the Irish flag and said, "What does "pog mo thoin" mean? And with a conjunctive word first, I mean to say that he butchered that phrase just like he was sounding through the syllables.

Gaelic with a brogue is tough to pronounce, so I've included a tutorial. You can buy the license plate frames on E Bay for 5 bucks.

The Power and Credibility of Citizen Bloggers

Years ago, as a Police Chief who dealt with local media, I have to tell you that I never disclosed all the details of any given case. In fact, I spoon fed reporters the softball answers to the softball questions that they asked.

Rarely, if ever, did a reporter probe any deeper than the fluff I turned over. Could they have? Sure- so why didn't they?

First off, reporters and journalists in general, make next to nothing. In communities all over this nation, they attend mundane meetings and try to cull out enough information to publish a decent account of what happened. It's really a pretty boring job.

Reporters make their living from their sources. They don't want to piss those sources off by sending in a few hardball questions. Because the sources, like police agencies and local government, have clout. They will simply call the owners and editors of local newspaper and television outlets and tell them that any given reporter is off limits. Or they find "spokes people" who filter information and deflect questions while often misleading reporters or outright lying.

Jay Carney is a professional liar. He does this on behalf of the President. I can't stand to watch Carney deflect and lie anymore than I can stand to watch Obama do the same thing.

I used to have a friend, a fellow Police Chief, who kicked a number of reporters out of his office.

So the problem is that media at it's very best, has a garbage in- garbage out mentality that only delivers the superficial parts of a story.

In the worst case, the media simply ignores and obstructs facts and creates it's own agenda. This is the narrative going on in this country. That's why we have this golfing buffoon as a President. I don't care what President Obama does, what crooked things he does or how many innocent drone victims there are, this media will find a way to hide and obstruct those facts. They have crawled into bed with him, I suspect, for no other reason than he is a black liberal. Thus they can claim, that they are truly above the chains that bind the rest of us "racists." Judged strictly on performance, Obama is a worthless, banker shill, installed to prevent the prosecution of the banker cartel. This despite the leftist agenda that would have you believe that Obama is the second coming of Abraham Lincoln, JFK, and Martin Luther King all wrapped into one.

The rise of citizen journalism, or blogging has been a wonderful thing. We stole the printing press from those bastards who had been abusing it. Bloggers are like amplifiers. We find stories, we pick away at them, prove or disprove the facts, and we write. Because we can. Nobody can fire us. We are the pent-ultimate carriers of the first amendment.

As a blogger, I am not beholden to anyone for what I write. Nobody is going to can me. I am not co-opted or paid. In fact, I have every incentive to tell the truth and I can usually find sources to verify what I write. And usually, I cite those sources. Occasionally, I catch a ridiculous story on someone else's blog and more than once, had it removed it with a quick thank you.

The people telling the truth right now- are mostly bloggers. Quite simply, we have no incentive or motive to lie. That doesn't mean that all bloggers are credible but the ones on my blogroll certainly are.

Here is the best 10 minutes you'll see today on why the mainstream media sucks. Most of the facts in the Zimmerman case were uncovered by citizen bloggers. Mainstream media obstructed the truth so that they could offer up their race baiting version, trying to lynch Zimmerman despite the facts. What they did was irresponsible and sick. It's a shame that NBC can't be charged criminally.

 







 

Bernanke Admits Obvious Truth, He Has No QE Exit Plan

Welcome to the great lie. Healthy markets.

Markets don't react to fundamental economics anymore.

This morning, amidst McDonald's revenue miss, a slump and huge miss in home sales just prior to interest rates backing up, the DJIA is up 31 points as I write this to 15, 574.

Why? The FED cannot stop QE. There is no exit plan. Just the hint of tapering QE down a couple of weeks ago sent stocks plummeting. Obama's administration would be in ruins- right at that moment in time when Obamacare is set to begin.

Here's a clip I first viewed at the Daily Paul. Bernanke admits the economy would "tank" without QE. It now appears QE is here to stay at least until the 2016 elections where politics might dictate hamstringing the new administration.

The great lie continues. For at least a couple more years.